Raylene May Keightley (born 19 November 1961) is a South African judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal.
She was appointed to the bench in the Gauteng High Court in January 2016 after a career as a legal academic and practising lawyer.
[1] In 2001, she was admitted as an advocate of the High Court of South Africa and was promoted to the position of deputy director of Public Prosecutions in the Asset Forfeiture Unit.
[1] In October 2015, the Judicial Service Commission shortlisted and interviewed Keightley for one of six permanent vacancies in the Gauteng High Court.
[4] The following year, in October 2017, Keightley handed down a landmark ruling on the unconstitutionality of corporal punishment by parents, finding that neither religious defences nor the common-law defence of "reasonable chastisement" sufficed to overrule the best interests of the child and justify corporal punishment.
[11][12] In May 2024, the Judicial Service Commission recommended Keightley for permanent elevation to the Supreme Court of Appeal.